Pinterest PPC, Facebook Sets, Online Beats Offline Shopping

Need help understanding Machine Learning? We now live in an age where machines can teach themselves without human intervention. Sound scary? It should. Scary amazing that is. Applications for machine learning extend from marketing to medicine to interstellar space travel. Find out what Machine Learning is, how it works, and how it will change the world. Infographic.

Google’s New AI Is Better at Creating AI Than the Company’s Engineers. Google CEO Sundar Pichai says his team has achieved “AI inception” with AutoML. AutoML is an artificial intelligence that can assist in the creation of other AIs. By automating some of the complicated process, AutoML could make machine learning more accessible to non-experts. Futurism

Survey: 37% of online retailers started holiday preparations earlier this year. How early you ask? 1 to 4 months earlier than 2016 according to a survey by BigCommerce. Along with early, retailers are optimistic. 88% expect an increase in holiday revenue. Marketing Land

Oh joy (sarcasm) Facebook is bringing paywalls to Instant Articles in your mobile feed. Since more people than ever before are getting their news from social media, it makes sense that Facebook wants to help publishers by introducing subscriptions for content on its platform. And it’s starting on mobile. The Next Web

Digital Video Marketing Is A $135 Billion Industry In The U.S. Alone, Study Finds. Video capturing, creation, hosting, distribution, analytics and staffing is big business! In contrast, advertisers are expected to spend $83 billion on digital ads and $71 billion on TV commercials (a total of $154 billion) in the U.S. this year. Forbes

Businesses can now sign up to add booking buttons to their Google local results. Google has finally added a feature to let you easily add a ‘book online’ button to your local business on Google Maps or Google Search. Soon, some businesses might not even need a website. Search Engine Land

Snap is turning to programmatic ads for Snapchat shows. Advertisers can make programmatic buys on Snap Ads — 10-second vertical video units — across the app’s public user stories, Snapchat-curated live stories and Discover publisher channels and Snapchat shows. Digiday

As Amazon Prime Hits 90 Million, Online Holiday Spending To Surpass Brick-And-Mortar. Deloitte predicts people will do 51% of their holiday spending online, making it the first time it may surpass in-store spending. Among high-income families that number jumps to 57%. Headed to the mall anyone? Pass. MediaPost

Facebook officially rolls out its discovery-focused ‘Explore Feed’. The Explore Feed is now fully rolled out on mobile and beginning to show for desktop users. In case you didn’t know, the Explore Feed is to help Facebook users discover more content across the social network, beyond posts from friends and Pages you already follow. TechCrunch

Google Attribution Rolls Out To Thousands Of Marketers. Google is rolling out an attribution model it introduced in May, powering the platform with machine learning. Google Attribution is to help marketers analyze how top and middle funnel clicks and interactions impact conversions across channels. MediaPost

Facebook Is Testing a Pinterest-Like Feature Called Sets. Oh look, Facebook has taken a break from imitating Snapchat and LinkedIn to imitate Pinterest. Facebook is now testing Sets, Pinterest-like themed collections that include status updates, photos, videos and links, and that can be shared with all friends or specific friends. AdWeek

Snapchat dangles referral traffic with link sharing from other apps. This is such foreign territory for me, but go ahead, read on anyway: You now can share links from other apps via the iOS share sheet, allowing you to send a private message with the link to one or several people. And rather than just turning live location sharing on or off permanently, you now can opt to hide in “Ghost Mode” for 3 or 24 hours. TechCrunch

Pinterest moves into paid search: What you need to know. Pinterest Ads Manager is now open to all businesses who have opened an account and uploaded at least one Pin. It’s time to fire up those experimental paid search budgets. Search Engine Watch

The B2B CMO’s Growth Strategy Turns Audience-Centric Over Product-Centric. B2B CMOs around the world are focusing on new buyers and new markets over new offerings when it comes to their growth strategies, a new study from SiriusDecisions has found. An enhanced customer experience is seen to have the biggest influence on growth strategies in the next 2 years. MarketingCharts

This morning I will be joining a sold out crowd to celebrate the 100th Social Media Breakfast Minneapolis St. Paul (SMBMSP #100) event. The plan is a panel with Greg Swan and Jennifer Kane moderated by Mykl Roventine. We’ll be talking about what has changed since the event started in 2008 (founded by Rick Mahn) and what lessons we’ve learned as well as thoughts looking forward. I have a feeling it will be a great collection of stories about successes, failures and the crazy world that social media has become. If you’re reading this post early on Friday, you can follow the event from 8-10am CT on Twitter with the hashtag #smbmsp100

What was the top digital marketing news story for you this week?

Be sure to stay tuned until next week when we’ll be sharing all new marketing news stories. Also check out the full video summary with Tiffani and Josh on YouTube.